What it means to build an actual human tone of voice for your brand By Natasha Keary
Nowadays, the biggest brands are in pursuit of the same goal
What do Virgin, Microsoft, and MailChimp have in common? They've each nailed a distinct brand voice and identity. Think Microsoft and you imagine an authoritative and sincere tone of voice. You’re likely to associate a modern, rebellious tone with Virgin, and expect a quirky, unusual voice from MailChimp. But if you take a look at their tone of voice guidelines, you’ll find that all three of these companies share one key ToV goal: being human.
It’s one of the most desirable qualities, showing up in both B2C and B2B tone of voice guidelines -- from Facebook to HubSpot. It appears so much that The Drum wrote a retaliatory piece against it, calling for readers to “burn any document that contains ‘professional’ and ‘human’”.
So, at a time where tone of voice is more important than ever - when 67% of the buyer’s journey takes place digitally and “average revenue is increased by 23% when a brand is presented consistently” - why is being human so important for companies? And when brands are under so much pressure to stand out, why are they using the same word to describe their voice?
Let’s take a look at the science of why being human is so important for companies, and how they can build a tone of voice around an actual, unique human person.
Brands are striving to be human with good reason. Research suggests that audiences naturally associate brands with human personalities, and even have a tendency to perceive brands and companies as actual human beings. That means that if a brand doesn’t manage its human persona, its audience might just come up with one for them.
Marketing and psychology researchers noticed that people tended to think of brands as people as far back as 1919. Since then there’s been plenty of papers published on the personification of brands and companies. This is what Jennifer L. Aaker calls animism in her piece in the Journal of Market Research. She observed that if you ask people about the Absolut vodka brand they imagine it as “a cool, hip, contemporary 25-year old.” In contrast, when asked about older, more serious brands, participants were more likely to imagine an older, more traditional person.
Why do we have a tendency to think of brands as people?
One argument is that it’s to help us form relationships As Harvard professor Susan Fournier argues, “It is a widely accepted notion that consumers form different types of relationships with brands. However for a brand to become an actual partner in the relationship, it must be perceived as a complete, literal human.”
We’re all familiar with brands that market themselves as humans. Think the Californian Raisins maid or the Green Giant Sweetcorn giant. These brands position themselves as human (or giant) in order to foster a relationship with their buyers. But this isn’t so easy for B2B brands, or those which aren’t necessarily client-facing. So how do you build your voice so that your brand is perceived as a complete, literal human?
As Vertabyte CEO and founder Nabeel Ahmad says, “all great brands have distinctive personalities”. The more personality a brand has, the closer it comes to sounding human, and the more distinct the personality, the higher the chance of the brand sounding like an actual, complete person.
How do you come up with a personality for a brand? One way is by looking at personality models and aligning with a specific personality type. There are two models that are often used for brands and individuals: the Big Five personality test and Carl Jung’s 12 archetypes.
Take the 12 archetypes model by psychologist Carl Jung. Jung spent twenty years researching and produced his work Psychological Types. This work features the 12 Jungian archetypes, which are personas designed to represent every personality and behavior type. Against this model, Virgin might align with ‘The Rebel’ archetype, who goes against the grain and is provocative. Microsoft might be ‘The Ruler’, controlling yet responsible and MailChimp ‘The Jester’, who brings humor, fun, irreverence and often some mischief. Each of these 12 types can be matched with a brand:
Another method is looking at ‘The Big Five’ personality test, which marks personality against five traits, including openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. Using this model, for example, a brand like Microsoft might score high for agreeableness and conscientiousness, but low for extroversion and openness. Virgin, on the other hand, might be given a high score for the extroversion and openness but low for conscientiousness.
Matching a brand to a personality might seem difficult for a new company. As Zazzle’s Andrew Brookes writes, an alternative might be to think of the company as a particular celebrity or person. Their personality, if scored on either of the personality tests, could become a benchmark for the company tone of voice.
It turns out that there’s a strong link between personality and the way we communicate. Psychologists have been analyzing how the Big Five personality traits are expressed through written language. Traits like introversion and agreeableness have been found to match with particular words and writing styles, especially across social media. These personality traits are also matched with how frequently and what kind of communication a person chooses. If they’re extroverted, they might be more likely to have a more active social presence or be more forward in emails.
Personality AI software, like Crystal, puts this research into practice. The software tracks data points and forms of writing to assign personality characteristics to a person. Once they’ve analyzed a personality, they recommend ways for others to communicate with them based on their personality traits.
This means that the data about how each personality expresses itself can be used to create a personality-specific voice. Taking these data points and applying them to make a tone of voice can not only ensure that a company communicates in a way that matches its personality, but that this personality matches their audience type.
There’s a reason so many brands want to sound human. In the era of conversational marketing, constructing a human brand is the best way to foster relationships with customers. The more human and distinctive a voice sounds, the more likely people are to want to build a relationship with the company. ◆
